What Are They Thinking in the Vatican?

In my travels around the world, I encounter two Catholic Churches. One is the rigid, all-male Vatican hierarchy that bans condoms even among married couples where one partner is HIV-positive. Yet there is another Catholic Church I admire intensely. This is the church of the nuns and priests in Congo, toiling in obscurity to feed and educate children. Lepers, prostitutes, and slum-dwellers may never see a cardinal, but they daily encounter a truly noble Catholic Church in the form of priests, nuns, and lay workers toiling to make a difference.


Nicholas D. Kristof


During my time as President and Dean of North Park Theological Seminary I have met many rectors, deans, and faculty members of Roman Catholic Seminaries. Because of our affiliation with the Association of Theological Schools I have been able to work alongside these men, and yes, women at workshops, business meetings, and accreditation visits. To a person I have been impressed with their deep commitment to Christ, their compassion for their students and the world and their humanity. I have never felt they considered me any less a Christian for being a Protestant. They have been patient with my questions, interested in my concerns, and curious about my experiences. Now I realize that not all leaders in Roman Catholic seminaries are like this—any more than all Protestant or Evangelical seminary presidents and deans. We are all, after all, subject to original sin. Nevertheless, I have not experienced the rigid and paranoid hierarchy Kristof refers to, but an open and compelling community.


The same is true of the Roman Catholic members of the North Park University faculty. For several years I have interviewed prospective faculty members. My interviews are concerned with “mission fit.” I want to know if the applicant is a follower of Jesus. I want them to understand the ethos and commitments of North Park University and the Evangelical Covenant Church. As a result of these interviews and my work with University faculty, I would observe that most of our Roman Catholic faculty members are as deeply committed to our Christian mission as anyone on our faculty and staff. Many, in fact, are among the most committed to that mission. Worshipping, serving, and teaching with Roman Catholic faculty and staff has given me a deep appreciation for the Roman Catholic Church at its best, whatever my theological questions and concerns.


Nevertheless, having observed the Vatican’s response to the sexual abuse crisis over the last few years I am bound to say that seldom has a community been more ill served by their leadership than the Roman Catholic Church. I have been perplexed by their slowness to respond, their mulishness and defensiveness. I have been shocked that the hierarchy has appeared more concerned for their abusive priests than their victims. The Christian faith, if nothing else, is, or should be, a champion for victims. It seems that for many in the Roman Catholic hierarchy the victims are a problem to be dealt with rather than wounded to be cared for. I know this is not true for everyone in every case, but it has been true in enough cases to raise questions. Why does the Vatican and Catholic leadership in general seem so tone deaf about this issue?


I would suggest that Pius XII provides some clues. Pius was the Pope during the devastation of World War II. He was faced with an unprecedented threat to European civilization. The Roman Catholic Church faced the challenge of both Fascism and Communism. Priests and nuns suffered in the hands of Hitler’s Germany as well as Stalin’s Russia. Any critique of Pius must take seriously the threat the church faced. We have the benefit of hindsight. We know the allies won. For Pius the outcome of the war was at certain points very much in doubt. Pius despised the Nazis. And yet he has been accused of being “Hitler’s Pope” because of his hesitancy to speak out regarding the fate of the Jews. I have read a good deal about Pius and I am not convinced he was anti-Semitic. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that he did not speak plainly on behalf of the Jews when he had the chance. His reticence perhaps explains the contemporary failures of the Vatican.


Pius was concerned about the survival of the church as an institution. He was concerned about preserving the structures, facilities and agreements forged with governments around Europe, including Germany. He feared the Germans would pillage the Vatican and slaughter its inhabitants if he spoke openly in criticism of Hitler. He had good reason for such a fear. Nevertheless, I would argue that Pius’ failure to speak out for the sake of preserving the church as an institution is one of the great moral failures of the 20th century. I would suggest that the failure of the Roman Catholic hierarchy today to speak out plainly and consistently on clergy sexual abuse is based in the same concern for the preservation of the institutional church. Although this is not another holocaust, it is, in my opinion, a moral failing of the same order. It also reflects a stubborn refusal to let “outsiders” tell the church how to do its business. I believe this is at the very least incredibly shortsighted and a severe disservice to deeply committed and compassionate followers of Christ. One can only hope that something will change, but I fear that a Pope John XXIII only comes along once in a century. There are some signs that some in the leadership are finally “getting it.” I hope it is not too late.


John E. Phelan, Jr.

Sleepless in Stockholm

On April 14th I left Chicago bound for Barcelona with a layover in, of all places, Stockholm, Sweden. I was bound for a meeting of the executive committee of the International Federation of Free Evangelical Churches—a big name for a rather small organization. I am the chair of the theology committee and had a report to make. We were late arriving in Stockholm and only as we approached the city were we told the reason. A volcano had erupted in Iceland and forced our plane south to avoid the ash. A few hours later my fight to Barcelona was cancelled along with every other flight out of Arlanda Airport. Across Europe airports fell like dominoes. The skies above Stockholm were eerily silent and no one knew how long they would remain that way. I was able to find a hotel room and let my friends Doug and Jodi Fondell know that I would be around for awhile.

As many of my friends reminded me, one could be stuck in worse places than Stockholm—a fact I readily acknowledge. I have been to Stockholm every year for the last fourteen years. I have many friends and colleagues in the city and have spent many pleasant hours wandering its streets. No, it was not hard to be stuck in Stockholm. But I had no idea when I could be able to go home. As every traveler knows, when your flight is cancelled you go to the end of the line, not the beginning. When my second flight home was cancelled SAS told me the next open seat for a return to Chicago was a full week away. Europeans were enduring long train rides and miserable bus rides to get home. But for the thousands of North Americans in Europe there was no option but to wait and worry.


Over the course of my stay several things became apparent to me. First, our dependence on airplanes to deliver people and materials makes us more vulnerable than we may be willing to acknowledge. Getting people from Europe to America is one thing. Delivering perishable foods, medical material, military personnel, and sick people are another. Fruit and vegetables meant for markets in Europe rotted in Africa waiting for transport. Both the Africans and the Europeans have made themselves vulnerable to a fragile transportation system that can be crippled for long periods of time by entirely natural forces. In the United States we depend on long distance transport of foods from within and without the country. We have not developed the capacity to feed ourselves from locally grown produce. We are foolish if we imagine we are not also vulnerable.


The second thing that became apparent to me was that I was very frustrated at not being in control of the situation. It is an American trait to go out of the window if the door is closed. We love to work the angles. We are confident we can “figure things out.” In this case, however, there were no angles to work. Not only could I not control the volcano or the policies of the regulatory agencies, I was helpless to get over the ocean without a plane. I had to wait, with growing impatience, for a solution to an intractable problem. A trip home on the Queen Mary was not an option! And I didn’t know how long the volcano would erupt and how much ash would clog the skies. It was sobering to be helpless and dependent. But it was also sobering to confront my assumptions and limitations!


The third lesson was a much more positive one. I was reminded again of the importance of the generosity of friends and the kindness of strangers. Doug and Jodi took me in and allowed me to disrupt their schedule for several days. They opened their home and made me feel welcomed and cared for. Friends in the Swedish Mission Church offered encouragement and logistical support both in Stockholm and in Jonkoping. Friends in the US prayed, offered help, and gave encouragement. I found myself very thankful for Facebook! I was reminded of the value of the community called Church.


Finally, I discovered the value of slowing down and paying attention to God. More than one person remarked that being forced to wait in Stockholm with a stack of books sounded appealing. And I was able to get a good deal of reading, writing, and praying done. I had meals with colleagues and long conversations with my hosts. My pace at home is so frenetic that I don’t even notice it. Being forced by circumstances to slow down, be patient and wait, was a good thing. I am very glad to be home. But I am also glad for the experience and blessed by the memory of those days. However, the next time I am getting ready to board a plane for Europe I will check on volcanic activity in Iceland!

Echo Chamber

Historian Tony Judt’s stunning new book Ill Fares the Land presents a savage critique of our culture’s “nihilistic individualism.” He argues that the rise of the internet not only contributed to this individualism but crippled our ability to communicate our differences and sustain our communities. Such a judgment is, to say the least, counter-intuitive. Defenders of the internet are swift to assert that the internet has made more and more information available to larger and larger group of people. Furthermore, it has enhanced our ability to communicate our ideas around the world and to varieties of constituencies. The problem with the internet, however, is not the availability of information or the speed of its dissemination. The problem is that users of the internet select what is important or interesting to them and avoid exposure to what is disagreeable to them.


Judt says of his students, “Some may read of environmental catastrophes and climate change. Others are taken up by national political debates but quite ignorant of foreign developments.” They may read informed and thoughtful blogs. They may also read dishonest and bigoted blogs. In either case they may not distinguish an “opinion piece”, like a blog, form a sober news story or scholarly article. They accumulate fan pages on Facebook and seek for persons who share the same tastes in music, art, movies, novels, politics, religion, or sex. “In the past,” Judt writes, “thanks to the newspaper they browsed or the television reports they took in over dinner they would at least have been ‘exposed’ to other matters. Today, such extraneous concerns are kept at bay.”


This, Judt worries, is a serious challenge for democracy. The problem with our social discourse today is not that we disagree with each other. “The disposition to disagree, to reject and dissent,” Judt argues, “however irritating it may be when taken to extremes—is the very lifeblood of an open society.” Our problem is that our dissent is frequently so ill informed. We attack from a position of gleefully sustained ignorance and freely chosen isolation. We do not listen to each other, because we do not need to. Comfortable in our circle of agreeable friends, we demonize all who differ with us using our most extreme and abusive language. Obama is not just wrong, he is a Marxist. Bush is not simply mistaken, he is a Fascist. We solicit electronic pats on the back from our friend and “hide” the status reports of those we disagree with.


We are living in intellectual “gated communities”. We intend to keep the “tea party riff raff” outside. We bar the way to the “liberal loonies”. This problem extends to the religious world. The church in the United States is on its way to experiencing a similar “atomization.” In the mainline church people who disagree on human sexuality are dividing up the ecclesiastical spoils. Advocates of differing positions on homosexuality are well on their way to establishing separate denominations where they won’t have to put up with people who interpret the Bible differently than they do. In the Evangelical world the “really Reformed” want nothing to do with the “pragmatists”. The Southern Baptists want nothing to do with “emergent”. And to “enlightened” Evangelicals everyone to the right of themselves is a “fundamentalist.” When people are labeled, they are silenced.


We need to learn new, kind, and generous ways to listen to each other. We need to learn to grit our teeth and attend to those who differ with us. Otherwise our democracy and our religious communities are doomed.

The Theology of South Park

One of my more cynical friends sent me this week a bit of dialogue from “South Park”. The episode is entitled “Kenny Dies” and contains some dubious theologizing by Chef.


Stan: Why would God let Kenny die, Chef? Kenny’s my friend. Why can’t God take someone else’s friend?


Chef: Stan sometimes God takes those closest to us, because it makes him feel better about himself. He is a very vengeful God, Stan. He’s all pissed off about something we did thousands of years ago. He just can’t get over it, so he doesn’t care who he takes. Children, puppies, it doesn’t matter to him, so long as it makes us sad. Do you understand?


Stan: But then, why does God give us anything to start with?


Chef: Well, look at it this way: if you want to make a baby cry, first you give it a lollipop. Then you take it away. If you never give it a lollipop to begin with, then you would have nothin’ to cry about. That’s like God, who gives us life and love and help just so that he can tear it all away and make us cry, so he can drink the sweet milk of our tears. You see, it’s our tears, Stan, that give God his great power.


This would be simply outrageous and offensive if it didn’t represent exactly the view many people have of God. Perhaps they would not express it as crassly as Chef, but their actual understanding of how God interacts with his creation is practically the same. When people wonder where God was when the earthquake in Haiti struck or the when the towers fell or when a child or spouse or parent died, it is Chef’s God they are wondering about. A god in direct control of every event cannot evade the charge of injustice and even cruelty. This is the god the “new atheists” despise and scorn. And I don’t blame them. I would despise such a god as well. But this is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.


Recently I was part of a dialogue with an orthodox Rabbi friend. We were discussing what both the Church and the Jews still need to learn from the holocaust. My friend suggested that both Jews and Christians had been seduced by Greek speculative theology. He insisted that the Bible does not try to explain God, it rather tells stories about God. Our attempts at rationality, at explanation, leave us backed into an intellectual corner. Our explanations result in a god that is either ineffectual or a monster. Rather than a God who is “not willing that any should perish” or a God that notices the fall of a sparrow, we have a god that plays random and cruel games with his children. Such a god is more like the vicious, arbitrary, and cruel gods of the Greco-Roman world. My friend said that like most young Jews coming of age after the Second World War he wondered where God was during the murder of Europe’s Jews. In the end he said he realized that God did not build the gas chambers or stoke the fires of the ovens. Those were the cruel actions of human beings.


During holy week we recall that far from causing us pain for the sake of his amusement, our God bore our pain for the sake of  our salvation. This God calls us to join him in his effort to renew and restore his creation. This God calls us to confront evil and suffering. This God looks to his church to be the presence of his kingdom in anticipation of the new heavens and the new earth where righteousness dwells. The god of Chef and the new atheists is a caricature, a monstrous distortion of the God who forgives, loves, and endures the suffering of his people. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the waiting father who throws a party when his manipulative and wasteful son arrives home. This is the God who with us makes all things new.

Lacuna

There is nothing new about name calling. It is as old as childhood. Call someone a fundamentalist or a liberal, a fascist or a Marxist and you have diminished and dismissed them. You no longer need to listen to them, because you already know what they think. You no longer need to look at them, because you know what you are going to see. Name calling is a form of intellectual laziness. It amounts to a refusal to stay in conversation, let alone sustain a relationship. The United States has experienced periodic outbursts of name calling. In my lifetime there have been three such outbursts. When I was a very young child Joe McCarthy brought name calling into ill repute with his reckless claim that “communists” had infiltrated the government. When I was a young adult, supporters and opponents of the Vietnam War hurled epithets at each other. Soldiers returning home were “baby killers”. Protesters were called “dirty hippies.” And now, over the last 20 years we have experienced a political balkanization that is producing another spate of name calling—and worse.


In her recent book The Lacuna Barbara Kingsolver explores the changes in the United States that led to the rise of McCarthyism and the virulent fear of Communism. Her protagonist Harrison Shepherd was the son of a Mexican mother and American father. Physically abandoned by his father and emotionally abandoned by his mother he struggles to make his way in two alien cultures. Living in Mexico as a young man he is befriended by muralist Diego Rivera and his painter wife Frida Kahlo. As a result of these friendships he is introduced to Leon Trotsky, the former Communist leader now on the run from Stalin. He helps Diego by mixing plaster. He cooks for the household and acts as a secretary for Trotsky. Although he is sympathetic with their political aims, he is more interested in telling stories. He returns to the states, lands in Ashville, North Carolina and begins his career as a novelist.


At the height of his success he is caught up in the “red scare”. His past associations are seen as damning evidences of disloyalty—a charge he denies. Kingsolver uses the grim paranoia of the post-war years to point to a fundamental change in America. One would have thought that following victory in the Second World War Americans would be brimming with confidence. She suggests that on the contrary in the post war era American politicians began using fear to control the conversations and accrue power. Russian communists were ready made opponents. They became the monsters lurking under the beds and crouching in the closets. Guilt by association was the order of the day. In the hands of a skilled politician an opponent’s reasonable appeal for justice and compassion could be morphed into Communist sympathies. Political demagogues like McCarthy found fear of Communism a very useful tool for rallying the troops. During these years, truth, fairness, and common sense were in scarce supply.


This is not to say there were no things to fear in the post war era. This is not to say there were no dangerous people and deadly situations. The nuclear threat was very real. But we had faced dangerous people and deadly situations before without sinking into morbid fear and vicious name calling. But this was an America growing more diverse. This was a time when people at the margins were beginning to move to the center. Our isolation was ending. We were now an international power with growing responsibilities. Rather than grow into this new diversity we became a country of adolescents. Can anyone watch CNN or Fox today and have any doubt that we are still behaving like adolescents? There is a hole in our soul carved out by fear—a fear of loss of power, control, wealth, prestige, and security. Ironically, this fear itself and the national adolescence it produces may bring about the very corruption and collapse we fear. If our current public conversation is any indication, we need to grow up—fast.

Chance for Renewal?

The news out of Europe for the Roman Catholic Church is not good. Following on the heels of a disastrous sexual abuse scandal in Ireland is an even more embarrassing scandal in Germany. The press is raising questions about how Pope Benedict XVI handled the case of a pedophile priest when he as an Archbishop. Outraged Catholics in Europe are calling out for greater accountability from their leadership—particularly from local bishops. Whatever moral authority remained for the Roman Catholic Church in Europe is quickly draining away. The church seems plagued by sclerotic leadership more concerned with the preservation of institutional prerogatives that with openness and truthfulness. I fear that excessive worry about preserving power in the hands of the clergy and hierarchy has cost the leadership its power rather than enhanced it. Will the church long survive without completing the renewal process began under Pope John XXIII but sabotaged by John Paul II?

I speak, of course, as an outsider to the Roman Catholic community. But my own Protestant community is in no less trouble. The mainline church seems determined to tear itself to pieces over human sexuality. Having accommodated itself to the culture long ago it is struggling to find a message and a purpose. Since the 1960s its numbers and influence have declined precipitously. It seems to unerringly swerve wherever the cultural wind is blowing. Will the mainline church long survive without clarity on the gospel, connection with a Christian past, and commitment to a Christian future?

My own community, for better and for worse, is Evangelical. In spite of apparent gains we have no reason to be smug. The evangelical community suffers from a nihilistic individualism that continues to fragment churches and denominations. Its churches are frequently glittering and large. Their programs are impressive. Their pastors are masterful communicators. But are they any less accommodated than their mainline sisters and brothers? Are their values rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ or in market capitalism? Are they as thoughtlessly wedded to the political right as the mainline church is to the political left? Evangelicals are no less subject to squabbling than the Protestant mainline churches. But they suffer from having no center, no tradition, and no larger community of discourse. In another generation will the Evangelical Church exists only as shards and fragments?

Perhaps the future of Christianity requires a total collapse of its current institutional forms. Perhaps followers of Jesus need to called back to his message, his gospel. Perhaps out of the ruins of our Christian present we can reclaim a Christian past. Perhaps we need to be formed once again as disciples in a community that reads God’s word, worships breaks bread, and loves one another—and the world. I am not anti-institutional. I have been a part of the institutional church all of my life and served it in my adulthood. But I wonder if the church of Jesus Christ in both its individual and institutional form has ever needed a renewal, a reformation, more than today.

Glenn Beck, Social Justice, and Big Government

Last week Glenn Beck created quite a stir among Christians committed to social justice. He denounced churches concerned for social and economic justice and recommended they be “turned in” by their parishioners. The Sojourners folks immediately responded, recommending that “social justice” Christians “turn themselves in” to Beck. In a subsequent broadcast Beck backed off a bit. But he still insisted that “social justice” or “economic justice” is a smoke screen for “big government.” I wonder about this. Certainly some social justice advocates are also advocates of “big government.” Others do look to government for solutions to injustices and corruptions—but this does not necessarily indicate a universal love of big government. Still others are as wary of big government as Beck and his allies, though perhaps for different reasons.


Social justice Christians draw their inspiration from the prophets of Israel. For the prophets the governments of Israel and Judah are “part of the problem”. Isaiah rants, “Your rulers are rebels, companions of thieve; they all love bribes and chase after gifts. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless; the widow’s case does not come before them” (Isaiah 1:23). Judah’s most powerful and wealthy citizens are denounced in no uncertain terms for their dissolute living and indifference to justice and mercy (See Isaiah 5). Amos similarly denounces the rulers of Israel: “You levy a straw tax on the poor and impose a tax on their grain. Therefore, though you have built stone mansions, you will not live in them; though you have planted lush vineyards, you will not drink their wine.” He continues, “There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes and deprive the poor of justice in the courts. Therefore the prudent keep quiet in such times for the times are evil” (Amos 5:11-13).


Passages like this could be multiplied over many pages. The solution to the oppression of the poor in the law courts and the burdensome tax levies was not for the prophets more government or less government—it was good government and just government. God’s law set the parameters for human flourishing. Following the will of God meant caring for the entire community of Israel. If the poor were over taxed and their cries for justice were ignored, this was a violation of God’s communal order. Not even their sacrifices would atone for such perversions: “I hate, I despise your religious festivals; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though your bring me burnt offerings, I will not accept them” (Amos 521 ,22). Rather, God declares, “let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream” (Amos 5:24).


The prophets’ critique is a critique of the powerful from the margins. In contemporary terms it is “populist.” It is a critique of powerful and wealthy elites. According to the prophets they are more concerned with savoring the good life than carrying out the will of God. They prophets also attacks leaders who forget their obligations to the entire nation of Israel. The rulers appear to live in an individualistic, every-man-for-himself bubble. But the prophets insist they pay attention to the suffering and injustice at their very doorsteps.


The charges made by Israel’s prophets can easily be laid at the feet of both Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. Both parties contribute to injustice and the grinding of the poor. So how should Israel, should we, respond? The prophets did not call for revolution. They called for a moral and spiritual renewal of their leaders. “Seek good, not evil that you may live. . . .Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph” (Amos 5:14, 15). In the end, pursing justice has never been about pursuing power. In John’s great vision in Revelation the opposition to the power of the Roman empire is a slaughtered lamb. He wins through love, sacrifice, and witness. And so will those of us who follow him.